(( 



A PROPHET OF THE SOUL" 



inert matter in order to draw it little by little, mag- 

 netized, as it were, to another track." *'Ages of 

 effort and prodigies of sii])tlety were prohahly 

 necessary for life to get past this new obstacle" — 

 the tendency of organized matter to reach the limits 

 of its expansion. 



Thus on every page does Bergson visualize and 

 jaaterialize his ideas. He envisages the process of 

 evolution of the whole organic world. He sees one 

 tremendous effort pervading it from bottom to top. 

 He sees thought or life caught in the net of matter. 



It becomes a prisoner of the mechanism by which it has 

 climbed. From the humblest of organic beings to the 

 highest vertebrates which just antecede man we are 

 watching an endeavor always missing success, always re- 

 undertaken with an increasingly wise art. Man has tri- 

 umphed — but with diflficulty, and so partially tliat it 

 needs only a moment of relaxation or inattention for 

 automatism to recapture him. 



The creative impulse does not itself know the 

 next step it will take, or the next form that will arise, 

 any more than the creative artist determines before- 

 hand all the thoughts and forms his inventive genius 

 will bring forth. He has the impulse or the inspira- 

 tion to do a certain thing, to let himself go in a cer- 

 tain direction, but just the precise form his creation 

 will take is as unknown to him as to you and me. 

 Some stubbornness or obduracy in his material, or 

 some accident of time or place, may make it quite 



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